Chapter 7

“Anything but that,” I corrected myself. Cadence looked just as shocked as I did, but for some reason, he just agreed with Ian. “Ian, please, can Damon or Kylie watch me. I don’t know if you’ve realized but Cadence and I can’t stand each other,” I said motioning to Cadence. Ian only shrugged.

“For now anyway,” Ian input. “That’s my condition. Take it or spend another month walking back and forth,” he said, giving me an ultimatum. I groaned and threw my hands up in frustration.

“Fine!” I snapped before I stomped into the house. Kylie was sitting in the living room. She gave me a sympathetic smile as she held up a Victoria’s Secret bag. I took it and looked at her curiously. “What’s this?” I asked her.

“Well it was a ‘sorry you’re stuck here’ gift, but I’m now changing it to a ‘sorry you’re stuck with the one person you hate’ gift,” she joked.

“I don’t hate him,” was my automatic reply. She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, clearly not believing me. “I don’t. He just… I don’t know, he crawled under my skin. He annoys the hell out of me and I can’t stand him, but I don’t hate him,” I tried to explain.

“The feeling is mutual,” I heard from behind me. I turned and looked at Cadence with wide eyes. He was leaning against the doorframe watching me. I turned to look at Kylie but she was already gone. I sighed and looked back to Cadence.

“I don’t know what I did to offend you, but can we just… start over? We are going to have to start spending 24/7 with each other soon,” I asked. He thought about it for a moment before he nodded once.

“You didn’t do anything to offend me. I just don’t trust new people,” he said.

“So… are we good?” I asked. He only smirked at me.

“Well, we’re better than we were before,” he said before he walked off. I don’t’ know why, but I felt nervous and jittery around Cadence which only put my emotions on overdrive which is why I snapped at him so much.

I went up to my room which was the room where I died and pulled out Kylie’s gift from the bag. I smiled when I saw it was a swimsuit. It was a neon peach bandeau with a hot pink bow on top. The neon peach bikini clinch bottoms had a hot pink bow on the back as well. I shaved quickly. It was dark outside but I put the bikini on anyway. I brushed through my hair before I grabbed a towel and headed to the backyard. I froze when I saw that Cadence was already in the pool. He turned and stood so that his waist was still in the water. He ran his hand through his wet hair and smirked at me. I stutter stepped backwards.

“Looks like we both had the same idea,” he said.

“I’ll just-”

“Don’t worry, I won’t bite. I’m sure we can occupy the same pool without killing each other,” he joked. I gave him a small smile before I unwrapped the towel and walked closer to the pool. Cadence stared at me for a long time before he cleared his throat and looked away from me. He smiled smugly.